ACTS Launches Africa-Centered AI Institute to Drive Inclusive Innovation and Development
July 17, 2025 by Joyce Onyeagoro
Rooted in the vision of an African-centered AI future, the Institute is committed to fostering ethical, inclusive, and contextually relevant AI solutions that empower communities, drive economic growth, and advance sustainable development across the continent.
The African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) has officially launched the ACTS AI Institute (ACAII), a visionary initiative dedicated to advancing responsible, African-centered AI innovation, governance, and research.
“The Institute builds on the support from the AI for Development (AI4D) program, supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). We are proud of the work that the institute has done through the AI4D Scholarship Program, which is bridging AI divided by supporting researchers and innovators from historically disadvantaged communities to develop and scale AI solutions and to shape the African AI innovation system.”
-Kathryn Toure, IDRC Director, Regional office of sub-Saharan Africa.
Rooted in the vision of an African-centered AI future, the Institute is committed to fostering ethical, inclusive, and contextually relevant AI solutions that empower communities, drive economic growth, and advance sustainable development across the continent.
While delivering the keynote address, Dr. Laurent Bochereau, Minister-Counsellor, European Union Delegation to the African Union highlighted the 25-year partnership between the AU and EU, coinciding with the anniversary of EU policy dialogue on science, technology, and innovation. This collaboration aims to foster joint activities and programs. A significant initiative is Horizon Europe, the EU’s €100 billion research and innovation program, which has a dedicated Africa Initiative, to encourage African participation.
The latest iteration, Africa Initiative III (for the 2025 budget year), has earmarked €500 million for 26 topics, including a specific call for Generative AI for Africa. This particular call, seeks to develop human-centric generative AI solutions for Africa, focusing on rural communities and women across four thematic areas; agriculture, healthcare, infrastructure, and digital skills.
“We want to involve a lot of local startups in at least three to five African locations. And we want to involve end users from the very beginning. So this call (Africa Initiative III) is open. I know it is generating a lot of interest. And we hope that this will help develop solutions which are addressing African priorities, but also using knowledge and languages which are indigenous in Africa.”
-Dr. Laurent Bochereau, Minister-Counsellor of the European Union Delegation to the African Union.
At its core, the ACTS AI Institute is driven by a mission to ensure that AI serves the people of Africa, aligning with the continent’s unique values, priorities, and aspirations. The Institute does this by focusing on five strategic pillars: Responsible AI solutions, AI policy and governance, AI and jobs, AI and capacity building, and data science. Through these pillars, the Institute creates tangible, human-centred impacts in sectors critical to Africa’s development, including agriculture, healthcare, education, and climate resilience.
“The Institute builds on the experience and network consolidated over a period of five years, since ACTS started implementing projects related to development and deployment of responsible AI solutions and related policies. This launch is therefore meant to enable us to do what we have been doing better, with a wider mandate across the continent.”
-Professor Tom Peter Migun Ogada, Executive Director, African Center for Technology Studies (ACTS)
“We are involved in research and development of Africanized policy, standards, and ethics of AI. Specifically, we are already developing an Africanized scaling of responsible AI toolbox”
– Dr Winston Ojenge, Principal Research Fellow and the Head of the ACTS AI Institute.
The Institute leverages AI to develop tools to enhance agricultural productivity, such as predictive models for weather patterns and crop yields. These solutions will empower smallholder farmers, over 60% of Africa’s population, to make informed decisions, improve harvests, and strengthen food security in the face of climate change. AI-driven diagnostics and telemedicine platforms are being tailored to address Africa’s healthcare challenges, particularly in underserved rural areas.
“It is good that we are now talking about African centered AI future. We, thus, need to prioritize bridging that gap that has existed for many years. We need to begin to think from the policy side. How do we build the necessary infrastructure? We need local infrastructure. We need appropriate capacity building, which must be centered on people understanding what they need to do in order to transition from poverty to prosperity.”
– Amb. Prof. Bitange Ndemo, Kenya’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium.
“The limitation in infrastructure comes from the entire architecture and processes around data acquisition, the ability to process data, the ability to critically develop strong and robust models. But we also have a challenge in data. Our data is still disaggregated. The Institute has the opportunity to make sure that we are closing that gap and make sure we have disaggregated data more real time, but also localize the data that can represent our local context.”
-Dr Devotha Nyambo, Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology.
Focusing on AI and jobs, the Institute explores how AI can drive economic transformation while creating inclusive opportunities. In analyzing labor market shifts and fostering AI-driven entrepreneurship, the Institute is paving the way for new industries and job creation, particularly for Africa’s youth, who represent over 60% of the continent’s population.
Further, the Institute works to equip African policymakers, researchers, and entrepreneurs with the skills to lead in AI development and governance through targeted training programs and curriculum development. This focus on capacity building ensures that Africa’s human capital is prepared to shape the global AI landscape.
It is committed to developing AI ethics frameworks that reflect African values and ensuring transparency, fairness, and accountability to protect communities and foster innovation that respects local contexts and needs.
“What we are looking to achieve collectively is to build an ecosystem in which responsible AI policies are adopted and implemented, and in which AI innovations are scaling their impact inclusively spreading the benefits of the tools to people that are most often left out of economic and particularly technological transformations. Many young people are looking for training and opportunities, and we have seen how important it is to support institutions across the region to guide that burst of activity towards responsible and inclusive AI, and to ensure that we are thinking about not only opportunity, but also about risks.”
-Gillian Dowie, Senior Program Specialist, International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
The Institute aligns with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy 2020-2030 and Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa 2024, which broadly envision a prosperous and integrated Africa driven by science, technology, and innovation.
“We are beginning to see an upsurge in digital numbers around the continent where the young people are using data centers to provide AI solutions to people within the continent. At AUDA-NEPAD level, we help support not just those working at the foundational level of AI, but those that have already leveraged AI to be able to commercialize it. I am happy that there is an opportunity for us to also look deeply at how African languages can begin to feature within this Institute.”
-Prof Brando Okolo, Head of Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI), AUDA-NEPAD.
The Institute is keen to establish and sustain partnerships with governments, academia, civil society, the private sector, and the media to build a collaborative ecosystem to steer responsible AI development.
“We have to get to a point where we begin to ask, what is it that we want? Because without having to ask those questions it means that we continue to practice AI research which do not reflect the everyday lives that people are associated with. This institute, therefore, is an AI laboratory to ask these very important questions”
– Prof Divine Fuh, Director, HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa.
Source: https://techafricanews.com/2025/07/17/acts-launches-africa-centered-ai-institute-to-drive-inclusive-innovation-and-development/